I’m breaking blogging silence with some very good news. This morning Jackson Hole ski resort president Jerry Blann announced the resort would sell its unlimited season pass for $1255 until August 31st. That’s a drop of 25% from last year’s ridiculous price. A long, long  overdue return to sanity for a resort with a huge [...]

I’ve been pondering offering up a mea culpa about this blog’s lack of activity- in an Olympic year no less,  and one with much to celebrate as the US Alpine team rocked the Austrians, the Swiss and all the others.
The blog’s title says it all, Powder Blog. With little powder, there is little enthusiasm. How [...]

I’m a partisan of this little boutique mountain range in Northwest Wyoming called the Tetons. Sure, they’re pretty, and pretty photogenic, but as a skier I know them to be the home some of the best skiing in North America, and as I’ve recently argue, the key to great skiing is great snow, or at [...]

Ok, maybe the good folks at Jackson Hole wouldn’t pass a graph making class, (how many bar graphs start below the zero bound?), but we’ll take good news in any form we can get it in a poor snow winter. Vive la Tetons!

A couple of days ago I suggested that skiers venturing off trail to ski steeper powdery slopes within a resort’s normally avalanche controlled boundaries would be wise to wear avalanche transceivers and carry a shovel and a probe pole just as if they were heading into the backcountry. Here’s why…Three significant avalanches where triggered by [...]

The third time was indeed a charm this year when Grand Targhee hosted its third edition of its Grand Targhee Ski Mountaineering Classic race. Fifty-seven racers showed up to race in bright sunshine- quite the change from the foggy and storming  weather of the past two years when racers had difficulty finding their way up [...]

I presume Mr. Wolling and his ski patrol partner were following standard procedures that have been preformed hundreds of times over the years to stabilize the snow in Cheyenne Bowl. If that assumption is correct, then we can assume that this year’s snowpack is extremely treacherous, causing a release capable of trapping and nearly killing a very experienced patroller doing normally safe and standard procedure avalanche control duties.

Remember last year at this time? The Tetons were getting pounded with heavy snows and the avalanche danger was insane. There was an inbounds avalanche fatality  at Jackson and another avalanche partially buried several of their ski patrol members and damaged an on-mountain restaurant. The danger was so high Jackson had to keep much of [...]

The holidays are great days to ski with friends and family, especially when its bright and sunny and the snow is soft and fun. The old adage that there are no friends on a powder day definitely does not apply. Today,  nobody was in any hurry to grab the best powder line or the last [...]

Yesterday evening a friend mentioned she had received three emails from Grand Targhee announcing the resort had picked up a foot of snow yesterday! I checked my inbox and I too had received three of the same emails. I already knew how good the skiing was during the day yesterday with nice light boot deep [...]